The apartment complex on the perimeter of Satan City was dated by both its faded coloring and wear and tear, but it was clean and sturdy. Gohan clenched his fists and counted the steps to the floor Sevoya's apartment was on.

He could not understand why he was so nervous- he had met this woman before, and she already knew his great, big, world-changing secret, so what was there to be afraid of, anyway? She even knew about Pan, too, and that was the real deal breaker. Besides, he and Sevoya had already…

He felt himself turn pink and turned on his heel away from the door.

Nevermind that Sevoya had come to his house and broken down into tears, or that she had slapped him when he had tried to make her stop crying. And nevermind that his visit today was nothing more than a desperate bid to explain to her about the truth of the day the world was spared from Cell- and why Sevoya did not have any reason to be afraid of Gohan or his father. The how and the why of his visit did not matter.

No. What it boiled down to- really, in the grand scheme of things- was that Gohan had engaged in intercorse with a woman he barely knew, he had enjoyed it, and now he was coming back to her house where they may or may not engage in the same kind of activities again.

Not that he was hoping for that. But it was, after all, a possibility.

And they were not even engaged!

He swallowed down guilt mixed with something else he could not identify and wondered why the whole experience felt so much like facing down alien monsters that wanted to kill him. His grand total of one date in high school had not felt like this- so why did he feel this way now? Why with this girl? Why had he never been this frazzled with Videl? He wiped his palms on his shirt. Possible companionship was not worth fraying all of his nerves.

Gohan berated himself once again, stopped in his tracks, and then redirected his course back up the stairs.

He could not run away just because something scared him. He had done enough of that as a child. He was a man now, with responsibilities and a daughter and a divorce and his own house.

If he was going to have a girlfriend, too, he had to go and fight that dragon himself.

A girlfriend. Not a fiancé, not a wife, not an ex wife. A girlfriend that he himself asked- not manipulated, not blackmailed, but asked- on a date. And she had said yes. This was new territory in and of itself.

What if she had changed her mind?

Gohan turned around to go back down the stairs again, and then made another U-turn back up them.

But Sevoya was not really his girlfriend, even, and this was not really a date. That had been the whole point. They were only going to talk.

That was all. Talk.

He planted himself in front of the door and reached for the handle.

Wait. Maybe he should bring some more flowers as another apology. No, he had done that last time, the night that he broke her chair. Maybe chocolate? He should turn around and go buy her a box of chocolates. Did she have a favorite kind? Maybe he should buy a sampler, to be safe. But what if she was allergic to chocolate? Gohan racked his brain for a memory of her eating chocolate at any point during her time as his student.

"Oh," said a voice to his left. "You're already here."

Gohan turned and discovered Sevoya with two shopping bags in her hands.

"Oh! Hi! Um," he smiled. "I'm a little, uh, early."

"You said you would be here at five," Sevoya said.

"Y-yeah, I just wanted to make sure I didn't, um, keep you waiting."

"It's not even four," she deadpanned.

"I-I, um," Gohan noticed that his hands were dominating the conversation and instead twiddled his thumbs. "I didn't want to be late."

"Uh-huh."

"The, um, the early bird gets the worm, and all."

Sevoya snorted. "You're creepy."

And Gohan winced. "N-no! I didn't mean, U-um," he swallowed. "I was afraid I would talk myself out of coming if I wasn't early," he admitted, studying his shoes. Then, he gave her face a shy glance. "I didn't think about it when you brought my glasses back to my house, but-"

Sevoya pursed her lips and produced her keys from her purse. "Whatever," she said, and unlocked her door.

Gohan watched her enter and let the door fall closed behind her. Perhaps he should wait in the cafe next door to the complex for an hour. Or go buy the chocolates, or a toy, or something just so that he did not feel so woefully unprepared for this.

Sevoya's green eyes and earrings shone through the dark of her apartment, both harsh and beckoning all at once. "Well? Are you coming in, or are you just gonna stand there and block my door?

Gohan jolted upright and followed her inside, and then closed the door behind him. Sevoya turned on a lamp and walked past the kitchen to sit on the replacement chair Gohan had bought for her in her living room. She put down her bags, crossed her legs, then her arms, and watched him.

The way her green eyes locked onto him as he journeyed further and further into the dim light made him feel even more nervous than he already was. Gohan wondered if he should sit in the smaller chair next to hers or if he should remain standing until she invited him to do so.

"You can sit or stand, I don't care. But you had better say whatever it is you came here to say, or else I'll find something else for you to do with my time."

Gohan jammed his hands into his pockets. "Miss Anillo, I…" he swallowed. He had been practicing this to himself all week, but somehow his words were as reluctant to come out of his mouth as they would have been even without rehearsal.

"Professor, those who can't do teach, and those who can't teach work the service industry. So spit it out before I'm forced to hire you."

"You own the restaurant? I thought…"

"I don't. I do everything else. But that's not the point." Sevoya lifted her chin. "You are the one who wanted to come here and talk to me so badly. So what, professor? What do you have to say to me?"

"I, um, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," Gohan said.

"That's it? You already said that. Like three times, at this point."

"No, I mean," he dug his nails into his leg through the lining of his pockets. "I'm sorry that my father's identity upset you. I'm sorry that, um, my identity upset you. I only wanted you to know that we won't hurt you, and that, um," he nodded, "we let Mark- Hercule Satan, that is- take the credit for everything so that we could live normal lives," he finished. "We never wanted the public attention, so-"

"So you married the girl who lived smack dab in the middle of it and did the one thing that made sure you got exactly what you say didn't want," Sevoya finished.

"I…"

"You should've known. Celebrity marriages never last very long, professor. Or did Videl do all the shopping so you never even had to look at the celebrity gossip lining the magazine racks at checkout?"

"W-well, I myself am hardly a celebrity, and I always thought Videl would be-"

Sevoya leaned forward in her chair, and her voice raised from a hiss to something more ragged. "You're hardly a celebrity, but your face was plastered all over every television screen in the entire world on the day that-!" she slammed her fists onto the armrests of her chair and dug her nails in. Gohan could smell the newness of the fabric scattering into the air from the friction.

"I never meant to upset you," Gohan took a step forward, his every move and word tentative.

"And you thought that little bit of news wouldn't?! Well! I never meant to have the Delivery Boy himself calling on me, but look where we are now," she said.

"I know it's a bit much, but I didn't want to, um, to, well, lead… lead you on without telling you that I-"

"Lead me on?!" Sevoya uncrossed her legs and thrust herself forward onto her chair, livid. "I told you- it was a one night stand! I did not ask to know anything about you. I did not want to know anything about you! You are the one who forced that knowledge upon me!"

Gohan pulled his hands from his pockets and clasped and unclasped them before finally reaching for Sevoya's shoulders. The look on her face made him think better of it, though, and so he laced his fingers back together. "I just thought," he traced the pattern on the chair's upholstery with his eyes."

"You thought? You overthought. You're an idiot."

Maybe. Gohan closed his eyes and rubbed his temples while Sevoya sat back in her chair and glowered at him.

"Is that all you came here an hour before I wanted you to to say?" she spat at him through gritted teeth.

"Well, yes," Gohan said, all the while wondering if that was the truth. "I told you that if, um, if you wanted me to, I would explain to you. About… about what happened. Or, if you needed to see, I would show you that, I, um, was telling the truth."

"I don't want to see." Sevoya glowered, her eyes as bright as her earrings. "You said a lot of things to me, but all I told you was that you could visit today. I never said I wanted to talk."

Gohan swallowed as he willfully stepped out onto thin ice. "Then, why, um, why are you letting me talk now?"

If it were possible, the low light of the room made Sevoya's eyes turned an even more sinister color as she sized him up.

"You look nice," she said, her ire now masked by something sweeter. "You even wore a blazer and a tie." She smiled then, with teeth. "I feel very underdressed." Then, she took off her shoes and stood up, slowly, and let her hands lead her ascent by dragging them up Gohan's stomach and then his chest.

Her fingers deftly loosened Gohan's tie. "That's better, right?" She cooed. He breath was warm.

"I'm," he inhaled, "excuse me, I'm sorry. I was not trying to impose on you or make you-"

Sevoya kissed him. It was softer and slower than the ones she had given him the first time he had stood in this apartment. He resisted for a second, but then leaned into it. Sevoya smelled like her shampoo, and a kitchen, and the streets of the city, and for a moment he could have sworn he could smell Videl in there, too. Surely he was losing his mind, but he put his arms around her and kissed harder because of it all the same.

During the third kiss, probably- he had not been counting- Gohan realized exactly how lonely he was.

Sevoya eventually made him let her go and flashed him a smug smile. "Help me change," she said, and worked his fingers down the buttons of her blouse.

He slid it off her torso when it was open and pressed his nose into her neck. Sevoya smelled more like herself, now, but he still unbuttoned her pants like she asked him and let them drop to the floor.

He swirled the pads of his fingers against her hips and worked up his courage to slide them into her underwear with a few more kisses to her lips. She was softer and curvier than Videl, and taller.

"Don't make me do everything," Sevoya threatened, and ran her fingers through Gohan's hair. "I've still got socks on." She bit his ear and he gave her another kiss in return.

Gohan gently pushed her back into the armchair, wrapping her tongue with his all the way, and let his hands wander wherever they wanted to on their way down her legs and to the elastic of her socks.

He tugged at her underwear next, and she laughed at him. "You don't like games?" She asked, pushing his head down between her breasts. "You don't like to play?" Sevoya undid his belt and pants next.

Gohan moaned and reached for the hook of her bra. Sevoya grabbed beneath the fabric of his pants and between his legs and he accidentally ripped the metal fasteners of her bra out in surprise.

"Ah," he said, pushing his fingers beneath the cups and onto her breasts. "'M sorry." He followed behind his fingers with kisses.

Sevoya toyed with him a little more and then decided to cup his face with her hands instead. Her smile was pretty, but her tone was not. "Shut up."

Gohan moved her bra out of the way and then pressed his face more deeply into her breasts. He nipped at them as he inhaled her scent and ignored the fact that his glasses had fogged up. He felt Sevoya pluck them from his face while his tongue hunted for a nipple and captured it.

Instead of letting him keep what he found, Sevoya turned her body to the side so that her breast rolled away, and then moved back when he pursued. Gohan whined and grew sloppy with his tongue and hands. He loved the taste of someone else's skin, he realized, and how warm another body was against his own, and how much he wanted to have someone to hold and kiss and make love to.

He slid one of her thighs between where his legs met and pressed against her.

"Please," he whispered, reaching his face up to kiss hers.

She kissed back and pulled his hips against her leg. Gohan hissed and sighed, unsure whether he should curse or sing, and pushed his fingers into her underwear.

"Please," he repeated, grinding against her, slow and steady. "Please touch me," he begged. "I need someone. I don't like living and pretending that it's okay that nobody really knows me."

"Gohan," Sevoya sighed into him and kissed him, and the sound of his real name coming out of her mouth made him decide that he could love this girl and never let her go if she would have him. "Gohan," she repeated after another kiss, "I... have to tell you something."

He drank in her green eyes as they took him in and swallowed him whole. "What is it?" he asked, soft and urgent, and surrounded by her smell.

Sevoya's sweetly parted lips and gentle moans turned to sharp, white teeth and acid green earrings. "I don't really give a shit," she said, and thrust her knee into his crotch as hard as she could.

He cried out and went limp as she unceremoniously pushed him off onto the floor.

"I asked you to help me change," Sevoya said. "And I'm hungry. I want dinner from somewhere that isn't where I work, and if you're gonna insist on taking up my day off, then we are going to do what I want."

Gohan craned his head to look over at her as she pulled something out of one of her shopping bags and threw it on over her head.

"Besides, your ex wife really struggled over helping me pick out what to wear today, and I'm not about to let her hard work go to waste just because you got ahead of yourself, professor."